Sharing Anticipation & Delight

7 Quick Takes (Vol. 12)

My last 7QT on Untangling Tales was over a year ago. And yeah, a lot’s changed. But that’s not what today is about.

~2~

The snow has officially melted here at our new house, and we’re finding all sorts of new work along with the expected stuff.

Expected stuff:

Maintaining house

Teaching children

preparing food for daily living

unpacking shed so we can make it into a garage for this winter

Discovered stuff

Painting cabin interior

building shelves for cabin

digging a run-off channel to divert seasonal flooding*

Cleaning out the junk yard behind the shed

building some sort of fox-proof duck run outdoors

* designates DS actually completed

~3~

You officially being spared a cuteness overload by my not knowing how to connect my camera to my computer (and I’m too tired to actually get up and do the required figuring out) BUT: we have 16 ducklings in our living room.

I am so glad to have them. And hope to have the adorable little stinkpots out of my house ASAP. The main trick at this point is that our land is largely tailings (chunked up rock) which means fence posts are more complicated to set in.

Though once installed they should be very secure.

~4~

I’ve been playing guitar again. Long enough that I’ve got subcutaneous calluses– meaning my left fingertips have little feeling now. I found the cords on-line to The Call (the credits’ song for the Prince Caspian movie) and it’s a nice fit to my guitar ability and my voice range.

I’m thinking I’d really like an electronics-free carbon fiber guitar to be a genuine worry-free Alaskan guitar. Years ago one of the advertizing pictures had them using the travel guitar as an oar while they canoed. Great image.

~5~

Started counseling again. This time with my pastor. I resented it at first, because I felt (especially since Jay initiated it) that it would turn into a “fix Amy” session. Yesterday I “sniped” Jay, mentioning his issue in front of the counselor and diverting his focus to Jay for a segment of the time.

Now that Jay’s confirmed he actually wants to work on his own stuff too (and that debates of theological difference are off the table) I am completely cool with counseling.

~6~

That said, with spring here, outdoor activity comfortable as well as possible; that means I feel less need for “outside intervention.”

I’ve been a lot more active, and have more drive than actual energy. Which is another way of saying I’m ringing myself out a bit. This morning is really low-key (sitting around: reading to the kids, writing a post, practicing guitar… Looking at guitars…)

~7~

Latest Poem:

Mystic
By D.H. Lawrence

They call the experience of the senses mystic, when the experience is considered.
So an apple becomes mystic when I taste in it
the summer and the snows, the wild welter of the earth
and the insistence of the sun.

All of which things I can surely taste in a good apple.
Though some apples taste preponderantly of water, wet and sour
And some of too much sun, brackish sweet
like lagoon-water, that has been too much sunned.

If I say I taste these things in an apple, I am called mystic which means a liar.
The only way to eat an apple is to hog it down like a pig
and taste nothing
that is real.

But if I eat an apple, I like to eat it with all of my senses awake.
Hogging it down like a pig I call the feeding of corpses.

I suppose that requires some sort of commentary.

All I really know to say is that I’ve felt the mistrust of being called something like mystic, and suspected it meant liar somewhere along the line.

When all of my senses are awake, it is a joy (and sometimes a burden), but mostly it’s as me as blue eyes. And it is the truth.

Legend is Life

"Halflings!" laughed the Rider that stood beside Eomer. "Halflings! But they are only a little people in old songs and children's tales out of the North. Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?"

"A man may do both," said Aragorn. "The green earth say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!"